Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer Getting used to sleeping while your body moves is the hardest thing about exoskeletal operations. Right now, I’m tail-end Charlie in a forty-man column accompanying a trio of Big Dogs lugging the payloads for tonight’s test. Above us, a ...

Author : David Henson I notice the message in the sky as I'm going into Eat-A-Lot mart -- COMING SOON. I figure it's a vapor-trail promo, but when I come out, the words are still there. By the time I get home, not a single letter has frizzed. Looking more closely, I see the ...

Author : Russell Bert Waters ...fireworks exploding, the smell of sulphur… ...sliding off the road on a slushy day… ...first kiss, soft, lights of the city in the distance… ...fighting, bloody nose, principal blocked by a crowd of kids… ...nervous job interviews, too ...

Author : Adam Fout Her hut is digitized light. They are coming for her. Her prayers to the netGODS continue. But there will be no deliverance. She has heard the whispers. She has seen the dissention. Her daughter screamed at her this morning. "Go." "Go!" "You must ...

Author : Olivia Black, Staff Writer The clinic is smaller than Joan expected. The surgical lighting and immaculate white surfaces make the space feel less claustrophobic, but it doesn’t do much to settle her nerves. Truth be told, she’s not entirely sure what she’s doing ...

Author : Philip Berry I am not formally sentient, but I do feel. In the beginning each encounter added to my knowledge of people. My dark hours were spent arranging those observations and filtering the inferences. After one month I had modelled the behaviour of my clients ...

Author : Dez Thomas Instinctively I closed my eyes: I didn't want to record my death. My heart pounded in my chest. I landed with a thud on the surface, expecting the scorching heat of the baked earth to surge through me. My legs buckled and I felt the unforgiving ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer The laboratory is filled with the sound of slow drops landing. The smell alone is enough to drive three officers back. Seeing the mess does for the next five. Officer number nine moves his torch in slow arcs, picking only edges and ...

Author : Victoria Benstead-Hume We made it to twenty-eight weeks before my neighbour reported me. Twenty-nine and the doctor classed it tainted. As if that mattered. Lace curtains lend a sheen of respectable domesticity to the surgery sat on the edge of the dead-zone. ...

Author : Jack Strange Funny, I never saw myself going into showbiz. I started out as a lawyer, would you believe? It was a good living. I was paid well and saved up a good-sized pension pot. But not good enough, as it happens. Because when I realised I was coming ...

Author : David C. Nutt “What do you mean you’re not an alien?” “Just that. I am not an alien. I am a herald from another dimension- another plane of existence-“ “Not from these parts, not a human, yup, you’re an alien.” “No. I am not an extraterrestrial, well I am ...

Author : Thomas Desrochers I read a lot of science fiction as a kid, and I think I made the mistake of believing that the futures I was reading about were like weather forecasts of what was to come. It’s an easy mistake to make – look at the weather forecast and see sunny ...

Author : Claudia Silva “How do you want your eggs today, dear?” He entered the kitchen with a big smile, happy to start the day. “I’m in the mood for some scrambled eggs, a little bit of tomato, onion. Maybe some mushrooms,” he replied. “I’m sorry,” she said with a ...

Author : Ronald Guell Day 5482: Here’s the problem with traveling at light speed. There’s no point in looking out of the window. You can’t see anything. It’s just a vast endless flat black. Trucking at 99.99999999% the speed of light, there are no stars visible to ...

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer The woman on screen is stern of countenance, yet there’s mischief glinting in her eyes. It makes her even more beautiful. “Who is she?” “Melpomene Drenaly.” “Why I am seeing the face of an inhabitant of the planet,” he pauses to query ...

Author : Henry Gribbin I am a child of the 60’s, therefore I am a veteran of the Cold War. I had the typical abnormal upbringing of that time, but there was one thing that made me somewhat different from other kids. As a young boy I felt this sense of dread. I know that I ...

Author : Joe Essid The bluish-gray haze in the western sky this morning is not the shadow of the Earth, rising up against the Dawn. No, there is something out there. It's coming, already slipping over the sky like a thin curtain, the first of many curtains before it arrives ...

Author : Laila Amado Marjorie began freaking out when we lost contact with Earth. I gather she thought she would still get to go home one day, though I can’t imagine the corporation ever paying for this trip. If you ask me, I think the bastards finally blasted themselves ...